I got a glimpse of “Dwarf Fortress” being played by one of my brothers. Since I generally don’t use Windows, this was something I hadn’t heard of. But, I have to tell you it was a bit of a shock to see my brother playing a game that appeared to be completely in ASCII.
That’s taking “old school” a little too far … or, is it? I have to admire that this is a modern implementation of a game using the style of an old terminal-based rogue-like game. It’s a fantastic effort in focused design. Much like poetry offers a way to distill words through structure into more than prose, the restriction of using ASCII seems to have created a grand experiment.
But, there seems to be a retro, minimalist movement. Like, the kingdom of loathing or xkcd. Like, uplink and defcon. Like, sketch fighter, too, I suppose.
So, are text MUDs and BBSs on the way back next?